Reused Acrylic, Reworked Design: REFLO x schuh 

At schuh, improving our sustainability is one of our key objectives and is something that’s very important to us. We’re proud to have reduced our emissions by 71% since 2019 – and we’re not stopping there! 

We’re continually looking for ways to conserve energy, reduce and recycle waste, and source goods and services that are better for the environment – and our latest project is all about repurposing our old store equipment.

Reworking Acrylic: schuh x Floreeda 

schuh is now working with Floreeda, a plastic fabrication company who are able to break down our unused acrylic from old store display equipment and make it into something new. 

Our work with the Floreeda team began when they visited schuh Manchester Trafford Centre during their March 2025 refit, collecting over 190kg of unused acrylic equipment to test at their workshop. Our team then visited the workshop to meet Paul and Jaqui, Floreeda’s founders, to discuss the partnership and see samples of the material. 

With the acrylics collected, we were able to create 450 new shoe risers – the platforms we use to elevate shoes on display. Thanks to the bright colouring of the materials, they were chosen to be used for kids’ shoe displays in our schuh stores.

The Acrylic Recycling Process

The acrylic recycling process started with the old risers being placed inside the granulator to create 4mm granules, before a small amount of coloured granules were measured and mixed in with clear granules to enhance the colour.

The granules were then placed in the recycling cassette which was heated, pressed, and cooled to reveal the new sheet material. After laser cutting the sheets to size and gluing the panels together, the schuh x REFLO logo was UV printed on them.

Following the success of our kids’ display risers, we got back to work with Floreeda to create risers for our adult shoe displays. These were made with a 50/50 split of clear risers and black acrylic granules with white backing, sourced from our own manufacturing offcuts.

Each sheet of REFLO was created with 3.2kg of granules, with just five sheets making sixteen individual risers – and to keep the process fully circular, all leftover offcuts were sent straight back into the recycling process. These sleek new risers have now made their debut in our Trafford store!

schuh’s Carbon Offset

All of our new risers created through this process can be returned and recycled again in the future – creating a fully circular economy.

By collecting and recycling waste acrylic instead of replacing it with virgin material, schuh will reduce our carbon emission even further. With our 190kg of risers taken from our Trafford store in July, we saved 1064kg C02e.

Our fantastic risers created with Floreeda are in stores across the UK and Ireland, including Birmingham Bullring, Dublin Dundrum, Leicester Fosse Park, and Edinburgh St James – check them out next time you’re in store!